Sprint Treo Review

[Gman]

From The Wall Street Journal

Sprint's Speedy Treo Features
Better E-Mailing, Service Area

What if you took the best hand-held communicator on the market -- a device that combines a phone, a PDA, and an e-mail and Web terminal -- and mated it with a new high-speed wireless network?

You'd get the Sprint Treo 300, the first Handspring Treo communicator that fully shows off the gadget's capabilities.


Handspring's Sprint Treo 300


When I first reviewed the Handspring Treo, I deemed it the best combination of a phone, personal digital assistant and portable e-mail/Web device on the market. Nearly a year later, I still feel that way. It's relatively small and light, yet it has an elegant design that merges a flip-phone and a full-fledged PDA equipped with a tiny but effective keyboard.

But the original monochrome Treo 180, and even the first color Treo, the 270, were hobbled by two problems. First, they worked on a standard dial-up cellphone network, with Cingular and VoiceStream. That meant the automated delivery of e-mail was slow and clumsy because a call had to be made each time the device wanted to fetch or send e-mail. Second, the Treo's telephone battery life was barely adequate at about 2.5 hours of talk time.

The new Sprint model, the Treo 300, promises to overcome both those obstacles. I've been testing it for about a month, and it's dramatically more satisfying to use. It gives a hint of a future when wireless data communication will be easy and fast.

On the surface, the Treo 300 is nearly identical to its predecessors, except for its silvery color and the big Sprint logo on its lid. It has a pleasing color screen and sells for $499, though Sprint is now offering a $100 credit against your phone bill if you trade in any older Palm-compatible hand-held.

But the Sprint version is the first Treo to operate, out of the box, on one of the new higher-speed cellphone networks being introduced this year in the U.S. It works on Sprint's new PCS Vision network, which offers two advantages.

First, it's about three times as fast as the standard phone networks earlier Treos used. Second, once you connect to the Vision network, you stay connected for hours, so the periodic automated downloading of e-mail to a Treo 300 is a smooth, speedy process that won't be obstructed by a phone call that fails to connect.

Earlier Treos that work with Cingular and VoiceStream will also soon be able to work on those companies' new higher-speed networks, via a software upgrade that Handspring plans to release. But those new networks aren't quite as fast as Sprint's, or quite as widespread nationally, yet.

As for battery life, the new Sprint model gets about the same 2.5 hours of talk time as the original model. But by the holidays, Sprint and Handspring plan to offer a snap-on extra battery that will cost under $100 and double the battery life. The battery will also work on earlier Treos.

I tested the Treo 300 in Washington, New York and Silicon Valley, and it worked great everywhere. In my home base of Washington, D.C., coverage was much better than on my VoiceStream Treo. It even worked on the train from D.C. to New York.

For my tests, I used Handpsring's Treo Mail service at $50 a year over and above usage fees. The service worked perfectly and quickly, and Handspring plans an improved version soon with more features.

Still, there are some downsides to Sprint's new Treo. First of all, Sprint has had trouble getting some customers set up with the Treo and the Vision service. But Sprint says it's resolving the problems.

Second, Sprint's own e-mail service for the Treo, called Business Connection, that competes with Handspring's Treo Mail, isn't ready for prime time. I tested it for this column and found it had too many problems. It's promising, but will take Sprint a while longer to get right. For now, if you buy a Treo 300, I recommend you sign up for Handspring's e-mail service.

Third, it can't synchronize with a Macintosh, though Handspring is working on Mac synchronization software for the device.

Finally, Sprint's pricing plans for the Vision service are confusing, and can get costly. You have to estimate your voice usage in minutes and your data usage in megabytes. Who knows how many megabytes a month's e-mail and Web surfing soak up?

Probably the best plan for a heavy voice, e-mail and Web user with a Treo 300 costs $99.99 a month for 2,000 anytime voice minutes and 8 megabytes of data. You can get 12 more MB of data for an additional $20.

The Treo 300 isn't for everybody. But if you're looking for the ideal combination of a phone, organizer and e-mail device, it's the best choice out there.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com

Updated September 19, 2002

[MaTTK]

Good review and thumbs up to the Treo.

Matt

[IdiOTeQnoLogY]

i must say from all the feedback i gather from real life users of it they all feel the same way about the Treo. they love it.

[WirelessBeachBum]

I have used the Treo for several weeks and hands down it is the best smartphone I have used to date. (Although I have not gotten my hands on any Pocket PC phones yet...I own and prefer the pocket pc platform....just not wanting to blow another 700 dollars until the nest generation of PPC's hit the market)

The treo's internet connection and built in keyboard are awsome. I generally don't like palms because of the graffitti writing requirement, but with the keyboard you no longer need to worry about thar chicken scratch language.

The only drawback out of the box is the lack of an adaquate email program. Business connection personal edition is a great program for five extra dollars per month, but I suggest you download Eudora's palm email client..(it's free). This gives you access to pop3 servers, you can send and retrieve your emails great with this program...it also gives you a work around the lack of two-way SMS messaging, currently in the phone (Sprint is developing an upgrade to give the treo 2way sms, but that may take awhile).

Othwise it's a great phone.

I was wondering what the alternative to SMS is. It is said that you can recieve SMS msgs from others...so my question is how could you reply? And when is the date the SMS feature is supposed to be out? Will I have to buy a new Treo for this? Or will it be a software upgrade...

Thanks!

[WirelessBeachBum]

Your current options for SMS would be to install the eudora email client and send your text messages as emails i.e. 8435551212@messaging.sprintpcs.com, or you can visit www.txtmsg.com and send your messages from that site using the blazer browser...I'm not sure on a release do for an integrated SMS software package